Patrick McFarland, one of the outspoken critics of Rob Levin (lilo of Freenode/PDPC) and someone incredibly hell-bent on turning Freenode/OFTC into a high-school-esqe popularity contest, has posted what I would consider to be a load of crap on his blog about Rob Levin's passing.

"I was critical of his actions at times when he was alive,"

Translation: I made unsubstantiated accusations of tax fraud, embezzlement, and worse against Rob Levin on a regular basis.

"I just hope that since he’s gone now, Freenode can continue on without him there to lead anymore. I may have not agreed with his choices, but I don’t think there are any people out there that could have brought Freenode this far."

I also find this hard to believe, considering how often McFarland made it appear that he felt that quite possibly, lilo was the worst thing to ever happen to Freenode, and that he was also accusing Rob of demolishing projects and services through foot dragging and politics.

Note also that the reek of untruth of this post is tailed by the "No comments" flag, meaning McFarland doesn't really want anyone to call him out on this... even though one of the other things he's been critical of lilo about was one of censorship.

Now, I also felt that Spinhome was a little farcical (C'mon, a winnebago to keep an IRC operator mobile? That's overkill on the level of venture capitalism.) but I certainly wasn't getting this bent out of shape about it, since there wasn't a whole lot of donating towards this going on. Perhaps one day Freenode would have become important enough that such a thing would be warranted (which might well have been about the time they hit the $310K-mark on donations), but this sort of thing tends to be self-regulating (people don't donate to projects they feel are stupid) and attacking PDPC and Levin in the manner McFarland was engaging in was nothing but juvenile.

In closing, I find it very odd that even with the disinhibiting factor of the Internet, people still find it necessary to say things they don't believe for a moment as "last respects". McFarland should have just left well enough alone rather than make a cheap last-minute bid to try to pretend that he wasn't being a knobgoblin to a competing project.

Patrick McFarland's spotty memory